Question about rich o'brien's material tutorial

arail1

Good little tutorial - I should go to the start page more often.

A question - once I've adjusted a texture in the material editor, is there a way to save it? Going to Open Texture in Image Editor opens the original texture sans any changes I've made in the Material Editor panel. For instance - I'm working on a display in which the client has specified birch tree trunks around the display space. I brought in a larch texture, applied it to the tree trunks but it was too brown so, using the sliders, I got a nice light, almost white birch color. I'd like to save that but I don't see how. Opening the texture in an image editor just takes me back to the original jpg and I have to start adjusting all over again.

Thanks in advance for any advice you've got.

Rich O Brien

You could paint the texture on a square the same dimensions as the texture. Export an image of the painted square and crop to size.

Import this new saved image as a new material.

Even though make unique creates a new material in SketchUp it doesn't apply changes to the image only takes the values you changed.

When exporting an image based on view there is an element of eyeballing needed.

arail1

Thanks for that.

It worked but with some drawbacks. The original image I was using was an Arroway texture so it was tiled. Painting a rectangle with the edited version and then saving it and reimporting loses the tiling. Also, for some reason the original wrapped itself around the tree trunk cleanly, showing little of the faceting that occurs when wrapping a cylinder with a texture but the re-imported image breaks up along the facets. Not sure why.

I guess the answer is to go back to the original image, save it under a new name and make the necessary changes in Photoshop. But I find that to be unfortunate because, minor though it may be, SketchUp's material editor seems to always give me exactly what I want, whereas Photoshop tends to feel like taking a battleship out for a Sunday boating on the lake.

Anyways, thanks for your reply, I'm sure the technique will prove useful in many situations. Have a good Sunday ...